“This is where you’ll cook for us,” Peter says.
He beams, as if at some clever trick he’s pulled, and she finds herself dizzy again, but not in the lightheaded way. Her blood fizzes from the tip of her toes to the top of her head, making her cheeks hot.
“I told you, I don’t know how to cook!” She yanks her arm free of his grip, stomping her foot.
He still hasn’t explained where Neverland is, or why he keeps calling her by her mother’s name, and he hasn’t listened to a single thing she’s said. He never asks, all he does is tell, as if his words are the law holding this place together and making things true, and she’s utterly fed up with it.
All around the boys fall silent, eyes wide, watching to see what she’ll do, what he’ll do in return. Peter’s eyes, full storm gray in the shadows, go even darker, flickering from hurt to anger. There’s a dangerous thing there—she can just see the very edges of it—and she’s glad she didn’t shove him, even though she wanted to very much.
“Enough.” Peter grabs her arm again, nails digging in, and she can’t hold back a small, startled noise.
When he lets go, crescent moons of red linger, imprinted on her skin. As quick as his smile vanished, it returns, and it’s the sweetest thing in the world, sugar melting in a copper pot. She finds her cheeks warming again, inexplicably wanting to forgive him just as badly as she wanted to push him a moment ago.
“Cooking is easy,” Peter says, his tone gentle, coaxing, patient. “Look, I’ll show you.”
He looks at her from beneath his lashes, his smile curling at the edges and encouraging her. Curious despite herself, she moves closer. When she has lessons with Cook, there are precise rules to follow, but what Peter does now is the opposite of scientific precision; it is utter chaos. He snatches handfuls of leaves and throws them haphazardly into the pot. She tries to catalog them, giving herself an anchor to hold onto—oak, rowan, ash. Those are common enough, but there are also leaves that look like coral wood and Java plum, leaves she’s never seen in person but has spent hours studying with her father from the books in his library. They aren’t leaves that should be growing all together in one place.
Peter adds a handful of gooseberries. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. There are stones in his hand, too, smooth and salt-crusted from the sea. She wants to protest, but her voice has abandoned her again. Peter’s movements are mesmerizing. Her stomach growls, and she realizes how long it’s been since she’s eaten. As Peter stirs the whole mess with a stick, a smell wafts from the pot, delicious and impossible.
“See?” Peter’s eyes twinkle, sly and merry, but with a knapped-flint edge, daring her to contradict him. “I told you it was easy.”
“But that’s…” Her words trail off. Instead she nods, agreeing. The meal does smell nice. A little taste couldn’t hurt, could it?
“Now, you serve supper, and afterward we’ll all play a game.”
Peter’s words don’t sound like a suggestion, even though it doesn’t seem fair. She’s more of a guest than any of them, and guests aren’t meant to be put to work. But she nods again, collecting a stack of bowls from next to the cook fire. It’s easier to go along. Her head hurts less when she does.
The bowls are hollowed coconut shells, and something about this strikes her as terribly funny. Everything about this place is absurd. She can’t help laughing as she scoops bowls into the pot, filling them and handing one to each boy.
“See? Now we’re having fun!” Peter’s laugh echoes her own, light and delicate like a falling leaf brushing her skin. She shivers.
As she hands out the last bowl, the boy who takes it gives her a pained look. There’s a bruise on his cheek just below his left eye, and the skin is tight and swollen. Before she can ask what happened, Peter slurps loudly, drinking down the contents of his bowl in one go, smacking his lips.
“Eat up, everyone. While we eat, Wendy will tell us a story.”
“I don’t know any stories.”
“You must,” Peter says. “All mothers know stories. Otherwise what’s the good of them?”
Again, there’s that glint of something dangerous in his eyes. She swallows around a lump in her throat and looks down.
“May I at least try some of my soup first? It smells so good.” She wants to seem reasonable, like she’s going along with him. Perhaps by the time she eats, Peter will forget about her telling a story.
She glances around at the others. The boys eat, some heartily, some looking afraid. She turns her attention to her own bowl, confused. It looks just like the mock turtle soup Cook makes at home, only she knows it’s nothing more than leaves floating in water gone cloudy with mud. She watched Peter put everything into the pot, but somehow she can’t hold the image in her mind. There are two truths, one sliding over the other, like the moon in eclipse.
Her stomach growls again. She brings the bowl to her mouth and sips tentatively. To her surprise, the soup is rich and warm. Maybe that’s the trick of it, believing that the soup is soup and not giving herself time to doubt.
She’s about to take another sip when Peter touches her arm, stopping her from lifting the bowl. His eyes are bright as he peers at her face, intent in the way that makes her think of an animal— maybe a fox—watching from the underbrush. Even though he casts no shadow, the leaves
